What was planted in faith? Let's not Dig Up in Terraria!

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And since it's the very last day in October -- or at least it was when I started writing this update -- let's end on an appropriate note. A few wisps of Ectoplasm, a chunk of pumpkins, and some Hallowed bars make a summon item for the next event.


Why an underwater arena? Well, like I said, the Scutlix can't fly, and maneuverability in event battles like this one is pretty important. I like how it starts running almost at its full top speed, and I like the passive eye-lasers it shoots at enemies, but its jumping can't get me around quite as much as I need to take on the sort of enemies I'll be fighting.

But as long as I have a Neptune's Shell or something derived from it, the Scutlix can swim. Being in the water with a Neptune's Shell is like having a Shiny Red Balloon that always lets you do another jump before touching the ground. And that's close enough! Let's see if it works.




Because this event doesn't work quite the same as the Goblin, Pirate, or Martian raids. Pumpkin Moon comes in phases, and defeating a bunch of monsters moves to the next phase.


Good news: The water arena works great! I can ride my Scutlix around firing the Terra Blade or lashing a summoner whip at monsters, and my UFO minions are great at zapping the incoming creatures, often before they're even fully onscreen.
Bad news: visibility was bad enough in the dark, and under a bunch of particle effects and number popups. Adding translucent water to the mix makes visibility utter shit, and that's not so good for a game I'm featuring in a screenshot Let's Play.


It rather defeats the purpose to let the monsters chase me out of the water just so I can get a decent look at them.


The Pumpkin Moon ends at dawn, regardless of how well you did. You're even given a score for comparison purposes. Wave 13 and 2556 points is... not great. The highest wave is 20, which guarantees rare drops from the toughest monsters that appear.

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Well, that's... I dunno if it's actually better, really. At least things are theoretically visible now that I've drained the water back out?


Like, the thing getting its spine lasered in this shot is a Hellhound. Can you tell?


I'm still using the Scutlix when I can, but if I'm cornered and need an escape I have to dismount before I can wing away. Sometimes that's a crucial split-second difference between life and death.

The ambulatory tree here is the Mourning Wood, and it has a rare drop I want to collect before I'm done with the Pumpkin Moon. They've got... 16,000 HP, I think? Something like that. They're tough! Defeating each one drops a bit of Spooky Wood, at least.


The true boss of the event is the Pumpking, which is basically Skeletron but with higher numbers. It's even tougher than the Mourning Wood, in no small part because it's faster and can fly through blocks.


Spooky Wood can be crafted into the Spooky armor set, which is the next summoner-themed set up from Tiki Armor. Defense for each part is lower, but after some experimenting and the three P-Moons I needed to get enough Spooky Wood to make the whole set, I've figured out that I need all the attack power I can get, and defense is less important. Let's glass cannon this sumbitch

Another Moon or two and I manage the rare drop from Mourning Wood: the Necromantic Scroll, allowing an extra minion summon and a damage boost to minions. That combines with the Hercules Beetle I bought from the Witch Doctor to make a Papyrus Scarab, for damage, extra knockback, and the extra minion all at once. The Sans Scarab is still unaccounted for.


I've figured out that a swarm of UFOs are about the best way to manage everything going on, both the crowd control I need for the "swarm of mook" phases and the damage spikes I need for the later "how many Mourning Woods and Pumpkings can you handle at a time" phases. The damage boosts from the Spookum Armor, the Scarab, and the Morning Star whip I got out of the Dungeon a while back is enough to get me pretty far.


After my fifth Pumpkin Moon I make it to phase 17, with a score of just over 7000. I'm gonna stop here for now. I got my Papyrus Scarab, and the Horseman's Blade from Pumpking. I also got a couple new pets, a new grappling hook, a gun that shoots candy corn, a gun that shoots wooden stakes (and can annihiliate Vampires that appear during the Solar Eclipse) a cannon that shoots Jack-o-Lanterns, a less-effective whip than the Morning Star, two new ingredients to craft new wings, and trophies for the Mourning Wood and Pumpking. I think I'm pretty well done with item drops from Pumpkin Moon, but I suppose I'll come back later and see if I can make it to phase 20.

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hey R2 whatcha doin on your Terraria game


Oh y'know, just farming some boss drops. Lookin' for trophies, mostly.

There's an achievement for fighting all three mechanical bosses at the same time. As is typically the case for the difficulty curve in Terraria, this is either utterly impossible or only a matter of time, depending on your equipment loadout. If I were in a world with a functioning day/night cycle there would be a hard time limit at dawn, where all three bosses escape, but there's not even that anymore.

Destroyer actually gave up a trophy the first round of fights, where I was collecting Souls of Might to craft with. I just wanted the screenshot with all three, really. In later refights I summon Skeletron Prime, the Twins, and... King Slime. I need his trophy too. King Slime tends to last about five seconds in the melee.


I even make a couple of Corruption-tainted worlds so I can fight the Eater of Worlds and get its trophy, too. Eventually I remember that new worlds means another shot at accessories that can't be crafted and must be found, so after a couple of potions to help me find treasure chests in the dark and tunneling around, I have a second pair of Terraspark Boots. Swapping to the kit without the Boots means movement speed slows to a craaawl, so that's another tiny convenience to have.

In hopes of making the trophy drop more likely I make a Corruption world at Expert difficulty. I can still steamroll everything I see with my nigh-endgame kit, so it's not difficult in any meaningful way. The Eater of Worlds has more HP than usual, but that's hardly a problem with the Terra Blade hitting a dozen sections at a time and doing HP damage to each one. But the Eater's drop in Expert mode includes the Worm Scarf, an accessory that offers a flat 17% damage reduction. Not sure where that exact number came from, but against lategame bosses taking 17% less damage is equivalent to quite a few points of Defense. Not sure if it's actually worth it, as Pumpkin Moon taught me the value of damage-racing some enemies down instead of building up my endurance. We'll see.

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Hey, who are those guys? I'm sure it's nothing.


I ignore the cultists hanging out in front of the dungeon for now and go on doing my thing. Another Martian Probe shows up, so I break to go handle that.


aww yissssss


It's actually not great for boss battles because it's kind of slow and handles like a cow on rollerskates, but it's unlimited flight baby wheeeee


Hey, what dropped this? I honestly have no idea, I found it in my inventory when I got back to base to clean things out. For whatever reason Mimics are spawning like crazy and every one drops a piece of equipment that is entirely outdated and doesn't stack with others of its kind. In a big project I have to stop what I'm doing regularly to come back and sell off an entire inventory full of Star Cloaks and Cross Necklaces and Wands of Sparking.

Anyway. The Money Trough seems to work more or less like a Void Bag. You use the thing, and a tiny flying piggybank appears. You can activate it to open it up like a chest. I think if you have an actual Piggy Bank, it's the same inventory as that. I start keeping my sellable drops in it. That keeps the Void Bag reserved for Banners, that other thing that clogs up my inventory on long expeditions. You get a banner for each monster every time you kill 50 of them, remember, and those summoned monsters I keep on hand to make sure monsters don't bother me while I dig are pretty aggressive!


Speaking of, they're aggressive enough to go after the cultists while I'm trying to leave them alone. This makes the cultists attack, which makes the summons attack, which pulls hate from the rest of the cultists...


The cultists themselves are, like, plain-ol'-regular-Zombie level of dangerous. Killing them isn't difficult, but it is a problem, because once they're all dead this guy in the Plague Doctor mask shows up, pulls whatever energy there is in that giant sigil into himself, and attacks.


This is the Lunatic Cultist, the first in the final boss gauntlet. I just beat up all the Lihzahrds and their sun-worship, makes sense I go after the guys who worship the moon next I guess.

I spar a bit with Looney C but I don't try all that hard to beat him. I don't really want to start endgame yet.

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I'm not ready to start endgame because I wasn't quite done with The Project yet. Take a close look at the top of the map, there...


I shaved more or less the entire surface off. I threw away tens of thousands of Dirt Blocks to do this.

Special thanks: Picksaw, Hand of Creation, and Mining Potion combined means I can take out three or four rows of blocks at about the speed a Scutlix can run.


Lihzahrd temple? Pff. Fuck your Lihzahrd temple.


There was a TREE here. It's gone now.


The Dungeon entrance I leave alone, since that's presumably always where I'll find the Lunatic Cultist when I'm ready to start the final gauntlet. I guess I can flatten out that minecart track I built so long ago do avoid the Dungeon Guardian.


I also leave the oceans where they are.

I wish I'd talked to the Dryad before I started to get a sense of just how much of the Crimson landscape I removed from the world. Can't have corrupt terrain if there's no terrain, after all.

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How long does it take to shave all of the terrain off the top of a Large-sized game world? I have the materials to make a third Ankh Charm. I could probably have made more, honestly, but I just sold off the component parts for a while until I realized I needed a second Ankh Shield for the second kit set.


I've got stronger summons from the Pumpkin Moon, and Beetle Armor from Golem. Let's see if I can beat Empress of Light now.


You can catch a Prismatic Lacewing with a bug net and release it whenever you like. You can then kill it to spawn the Empress.

So, funny thing. In worlds with a day/night cycle, Lacewings only appear at night, so the Empress is normally fought at night. If you release and kill a Lacewing during the day, the Empress enters an enraged state and her attack power goes up.

like, way up.

like, super way all the way up

like, every single hit will kill you no matter what up


When I said the Empress of Light is a Touhou I meant it. How the hell do you avoid all of this, especially when anything can kill you instantly?

Beating the Empress while she's enraged will grant the Terraprism, the strongest summon magic in the game. But even if I knew how to enrage her in a world without a sunrise, I sincerely doubt I could ever beat her like that. I'm trying to be reasonably completionist here but there's no way I can 100% a Terraria run.


Empress drops a shiny new in-game cursor and a few bottles of dye to make my character colors psychedelic.


It's kind of weird that summoner whips have attack power that's nearly double that of the strongest melee weapons I can find at the same tier. The "tag damage" on a whip means that summon creatures have their own attack power boosted by that amount for four seconds after the whip strikes an enemy. A lash with this Kaleidoscope deals a couple hundred damage, then the target is swarmed by seven crows that each do 55 base plus 20 tag damage and basically don't stop hitting the thing until it dies.

This doesn't give me significantly higher DPS than the Terra Blade, since the Terra Blade is so awesome on its own and I have more melee-boosting accessories, but the summons don't ever let up when I'd have to focus on not getting killed instead of hitting with Terra Blade beams, so they kill things faster that way.


The Starlight blade has only double-digit attack power, but enemies that don't flinch backwards out of its attack range get absolutely pummeled by all the sword beams. Unfortunately, enemies that don't flinch are mostly bosses, and I don't really want to get within Starlight range of any of the bosses I'm fighting anymore.

The Empress also drops a bow that does bow stuff, and a magic spell that mimics one of those shiny colorful glittery laser spreads she does. I got all her stuff, including mask and trophy, so I'm done with the Empress unless I really, really feel motivated to go for the Terraprisma.

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Today's update starts at the ocean.

In Mushroom biomes, after hardmode, it's possible that when the game needs to spawn a critter, it will create a Truffle Worm. Unlike most critters, Truffle Worms have a sense of self-preservation and will dig like hell to get away when a player character gets close. Net one anyway and you get something with "Bait power: 666%."

Which may seem a little suspicious. A worm that's enchanted with a Fallen Star is only 35%, a rare Golden Worm or Master Bait is still just 50%. Triple digits seems a bit much, apart from the assumed meaning behind the number 666.

Take your rod and reel, cast a Truffle Worm into the ocean, and pull up whatever takes the bait.


It's Duke Fishron, the pig-shark-dragon optional boss.


Duke FIshron would be pretty easy, except all his attacks do frankly absurd amounts of damage, and he's fast. His basic movement is a ramming attack, and it's faster than Terraspark Boots or my new UFO can get me away from him. And if he happens to chase you into one of those shark-launching vortices he spawns all over the place, well, see "frankly absurd amounts of damage". The Sharknadoes don't move and the sharks they spit out are easily destroyed by the Terra Blade or Kaleidoscope, but I'm pretty sure they got a pretty good kill count on me anyway.


No new armor, again, but Duke gives up a new round of weapons. The summon spell lets me summon Sharknadoes of my own, his bow shoots five arrows at a time, and his melee weapon is a sort of rocket-punch like the Golem Fist that spits out homing bubbles. Duke's magic spell drop is probably the first time in the game magic has really seemed at all useful, since it's a Razorblade Typhoon that spits out a fast-moving spinning energy sawblade that homes in on enemies and hits them repeatedly.

The Terraria Wiki speaks highly of the bow, saying that the five arrows all at once give it some unmatched DPS, but I'm just not seeing it. Maybe it got nerfed in the last update and the editors haven't edited the article to reflect that yet. Maybe I'm just bad at archery. Either way, Razorblade Typhoon seems to be the only thing Duke drops that isn't crap.

Crap, from a butt.


Halloween is past. Mariah Carey awakens from her ten-month slumber. People in Discord are yelling at Lyrai for posting that weird "padoru padoru" meme. It must be Toyotathon Chrismastime.

A couple more wisps of Ectoplasm and some of Skeletron Prime's Souls of Fright wrapped all up in delicate Silk makes a Naughty Present, which summons the Frost Moon event. It works more or less like Pumpkin Moon, but it's harder.


The Ice Queen is a lot faster than the Pumpking, and inflicts Chilled and Frozen debuffs to slow a guy down. The Everscream pumps out even more attacks than the flechette storm you saw already from Mourning Wood. And the Santank is just a big fat fuckin' sack of hit points even if it couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with most of its attacks. The most dangerous thing about it is that it drops spike balls on the ground, which linger for rather longer than you might expect and have a contact-damage output somewhere around the range of Duke Fishron's Sharknado. But while the Sharknadoes are several stories tall and glow blue, the spike balls tend to blend in with the assorted scattered bits of gore and machine parts that build up around a big melee like this. I've walked by one of my Heart Statues to pick up five or six HP recovery items, didn't notice the spike ball sitting among them, and came out with less health than I went in.


Rewards? The Elf Melter, pictured, is a new flamethrower that burns slime gel as ammunition. It's good for burning through lots of targets but its DPS against the big guys is pretty lacking. There's a Chain Gun that brings the Santank's piss-poor accuracy to your side. Razorpine is the Everscream's needle storm. The Blizzard Staff is a reworked Meteor Staff from way back when, dropping icy projectiles from the sky wherever the cursor is aiming. The Christmas Tree Sword is... a Christmas tree used as a sword, and drops exploding ornaments. The Snowman Rocket Launcher is a rocket launcher that makes all its rockets look like snowmen.


The drops from Duke Fishron were disppointing, and the Frost Moon ain't great. In fact, the best thing I've found to handle the Everscream and Santank is to get in their faces and stab them with the Starlight. Swapping back and forth between the Terra Blade to chop through crowds of low-level enemies and the Starlight to handle the HP-sponge bosses is the best I can do for Frost Moon. It gets me to Round 15, which will have to do, for now -- after six tries experimenting with various weapons, I'm out of Ectoplasm to make more Naughty Presents.


Beating the Frost Moon makes it the game's "Christmastime" event for an in-game day, just like beating Pumpkin Moon made it Halloween. This means enemies are dropping presents, with more vanity clothes, way-outdated holiday-themed gear, and food items. One drops a Snow Globe, used to summon the Frost Legion. The Frost Legion are a bunch of homicidal snowmen, and their drops are... well, just snow, really. But finishing the event -- a straight-up "kill like a hundred of 'em" like the Goblin Army or Pirates or Martians -- means Santa Claus can show up in worlds when it's Christmastime.

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Frost Moons can only be done at night and end at dawn, so that left me in-game daytime to do whatever I wanted. I spent it paving over all that flat, empty space I made on the world's surface. The background walls I left up are ugly as shit -- a lot of them are Crimson blood, scabs, boils, and so on -- but I don't think I have the patience to dig them all up. I just hang torches on 'em.


"Hey guys, I brought you a Christmas present. It's a Terra Blade. Well, sword beams from a Terra Blade, at least."


I could hang back and try shooting beams at the Lunatic Cultist, but after seeing how well the Starlight did against the Frost Moon bosses I figured I'd give it a whirl. It chews through Looney-C so fast he doesn't even get to do any of his second-phase attacks.

So I take back what I said about Starlight before. Getting up close and shredding bosses with it, soaking hits with Beetle Armor, is a pretty good strategy. (I don't think I'd try it with Duke Fishron, though.)


Huh. Did everything just taste purple for a second?


The game lore is that the Lunatic Cultist is the mastermind behind all the stuff that's going wrong with Terraria's world. He's the one ultimately behind all the monsters roaming around, who forced the Mechanic to build the mech bosses, and probably why the Corruption and Crimson are running rampant. Presumably the whole reason your guy has been doing all the stuff they're doing is to stop the Lunar Cult.

Only you're too slow, because whatever it is they were trying to do just happened.


Dropping down to my paved-over ground, there's this big purple phallus-lamprey floating in the air inside a forcefield bubble. So that's new.

This is the first Celestial Pillar, the Nebula Pillar. It's themed around magic, and surrounded by unique enemies that can teleport and throw debuffs at me. One minion is basically a D&D Intellect Devourer that latches onto my face so I can't see a damn thing, although obviously I didn't get a screenshot of that.


Each time I beat a minion, a little thread of red energy lashes to the Nebula Pillar's forcefield. After 100 enemies defeated, the forcefield breaks and I can go nutshit on the Pillar itself with the Starlight.


...I'm sure it's fine.

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The Lunatic Cultist dropped an Ancient Manipulator, the final workstation in the game, used exclusively to craft items out of the fragments from the Pillars and some stuff called "Luminite" I haven't seen yet.


I asked the Guide what I can do with these Nebula Fragments I got, and he's got a great idea. (This requires three other kinds of Fragments, and some Luminite, to make. So on with the Celestial Invasion event.)


The Solar Pillar is melee-themed. The monsters around it tend to have pretty high defense and do collision damage by preference. The Pillar itself sprays fireballs at me to defend itself, which is more than I can say the Nebula Pillar ever did. The thing to remember about the Solar Pillar is to stay on the ground. There are Crawltipedes zipping around, and they ignore anyone with feet on the ground. But if you try to avoid all the other melee monsters on the ground by flying into the air, the Crawltipedes immediately home in and hit like a truck. You can't even damage-race them as they charge, because their only vulnerable spot is the tip of their tail.


Thankfully, once I beat my 100 creatures (and that includes knocking several Crawltipedes out of the sky), the Starlight is juuust able to reach up and hit the Solar Pillar without me having to fly to do it. That moon in the background's gettin' pretty big, innit?


I'm sure it's fine!


The Stardust Pillar is summoning-themed, and a lot of its minions break apart into smaller minions when I kill them. Sadly, only the first kill seems to count, unless you laze around enough that the smaller minions have time to mature back into regular ones (that will themselves break apart when defeated).


Obligatory shot of the background for this pillar. Much like all the other backgrounds that could show up but don't in a Don't Dig Up world, there's usually a lot more going on back there. Oh well.

So I beat the Stardust Pillar, and...


No, wait, that's not it.

(The "Spirit of Christmas" leaving means it's dawn of the next day from beating a Frost Moon, and the present-dropping replace-recovery-hearts-with-candy-canes Christmas-themed gameplay elements are gone. Santa can only exist in a world around Christmastime, so it reverting back to early November means he explodes messily, wherever he was at the time.)




I'm. sure. it's. fine.

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Take another break to head back to base before the last pillar. Stock up on potions, see what I can do with these Fragments, ya know. For the first time in what feels like a very long time, the fragments can be crafted into a new set of armor... if I have some Luminite to do it with. Fragments alone can make weapons, though. I turn some Solar Fragments into the Daybreak, a fiery javelin that explodes after it sticks into a target. Stardust Fragments could make a new summon spell, if I had enough of them. Nebula Fragments make magic weapons, which I don't bother with. Though I assume they're some of the best spells in the game, spells in general have been lackluster at best.

The Daybreak has better range than this, I'm just zipping along the asphalt at 60 mph so it's hard to tell how far they really fly when I'm running up beneath them.


I didn't get a screenshot of the Vortex Pillar at all? Huh. Oh well. It's another big spiky thing in a forcefield, and I gotta beat up its minions before I stab it with the Starlight. While it's themed around Ranged attacks, the Vortex Pillar likes to shoot lightning bolts and one of its minions do the "break apart into pieces that regrow into full minions" bit from the summoner pillar instead. I dunno, man, ranged attacks have also been kinda not-great for the whole game, stands to reason a boss themed around them would steal other, better gimmicks.


In the earliest concept phases, the last boss of Terraria would be fought under threat of the moon colliding with the Earth, Majora's Mask style. Presumably you would be encountering the Nebula, Vortex, Stardust, and Solar Pillars in that order while the moon loomed larger and larger in the background, rather than doing them in whatever order you like because they all show up at once as happens now.

Beat the fourth Pillar and you're out of damage types, so...


I'm... sure it's fine?


Hey, what happened to the music?


Oh no!


Oh... uh? Huh?

Moon Lord? You there, buddy?


Aww, he's just shy, hiding behind the background walls.


So I've had to fight the Eyes of Cthulhu, the Brain of Cthulhu, what may well be the Intestines of Cthulhu... so here he is, the big man himself, the Cthulhu of Cthulhu.

Or, according to a presumably-joke Tweet from the main dev, the Brother of Cthulhu.

The Lore is that a long damn time ago the Dryads -- there was more than one back then -- fought to protect the Earth from this guy. They couldn't kill him, so they tore him to pieces and sealed him away on the dark side of the moon. I've had to fight various pieces early on, presumably revived by the Lunatic Cultist as part of the plot to bring back Moon Lord himself. Even now the Moon Lord isn't whole, he's got an exposed ribcage and doesn't exist from the end of his spine on down.


I guess I should have taken the time to break down those background walls after all. You have any idea how hard it is to aim an exploding javelin at a fast-moving target you can't even see, while trying to dodge death lasers and HP-sucking tongues and all that stuff?


Eventually I give up on running and jumping and just hop in my UFO to take this fight to the skies.

The Moon Lord has eyes in the middle of its head and in the palms of each hand. The eyes open to shoot various beams and lasers and projectiles, then close again to turn invulnerable. Each eye has its own HP meter, and when it's depleted, the eye pops out of its socket and flies around as a True Eye of Cthulhu to keep shooting lasers at me.

Once all the eyesockets are emptied of the True Eyes, his ribcage opens up, revealing his heart. Moon Lord's attacks don't change, but he does get a bit more desperate and throws them out faster. 50,000 HP later...

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Moon Lord is the last thing to do, though. There's nothing else to guide me to do. You'd think the NPCs might notice that kind of thing, but they just do whatever it is they normally do.


Anyway. Remember how I said Luminite was the last material I needed, to make the last armor upgrades out of the Solar, Vortex, Nebula, and Stardust fragments dropped by the pillars? Moon Lord always drops Luminite Ore, which can be made into Luminite Bars at the Ancient Manipulator, then the Luminite Bars can be made into other stuff.


I spend a few days hammering out all of the background walls with my UFO... nah, not really. I used a map editor to erase them. Clearing out the blocks was enough of a task with the fast-digging Picksaw (and prompted some fascinating discussions on the nature of hyperfixation with my therapist), but using the Chlorophyte Hammer to dig out all the background walls is just too slow, too tedious.


It will not surprise you to learn that the next step is to fight Moon Lord a bunch more times to get more drops and more Luminite.


The next fight is not any easier than the first one, except I can see the bastard this time. His weapon drop before was the Space Dolphin Machine Gun, which being a gun I didn't ever bother with. This time I get the Meowmere, which is melee-class, and therefore much better.


It shoots rainbows! With cat heads on! The cat heads bounce and go "myeeowww!" when they hit the ground!


I can make nice rainbow helix patterns with the Meowmere as I run along the paved-flat asphalt surface of the world! Once I stop moving a wall of exploding rainbow cats hits whatever it is in front of me!


The first thing the Lunatic Cultist does is fly right above whatever your current position is. If that space is already filled with a dozen 300+ attack power exploding rainbow cats, the fight does not last long.


The same can be said of Moon Lord's central eye. Once the Core opens up I can hop in my UFO, fly upwards a bit to get the Core to hang out between where I'm flying and the ground, and do the same firing downward for a quick Moon Lord win.


By this point I can craft an entire set of Solar Flare armor, which gives double-digit boosts to melee damage and crit chance, a bit of life regeneration, and a Turtle-Armor-like counterattack at anything that runs into me. Best melee armor in the game, here.


I also get a Meowmere Minecart, which looks like a toaster pastry with a cat head and leaves a trail of rainbows as it moves. It goes "myyyeeowww" when I jump, but amelodically, there's no way to get it to do the actual song.

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This is the Last Prism, one of the final Magic-class weapons. It starts out as a spray of colorful lasers that eventually focus into one giant beam, usually right as I run out of MP because I don't have all the Nebula Armor yet.

Above: The Stardust Dragon, one of the last Summons, crafted from (you guessed it) Stardust Fragments. Like the Desert Tiger it doesn't summon a swarm of things, each subsequent cast to bring in a new minion instead makes the dragon longer and stronger. You normally get a single minion at a time, and the Bewitching Table gives a passive boost that allows another, so this is near minimum power. It's still better than anything else I've seen yet, and as I understand it is generally considered the best summon in the game.

The Moon Lord drops a Summon-class weapon, of course, but it's a sentry. It replaces the Staff of the Frost Hydra I picked up so long ago... or would, if I kept the Frost Hydra around after I got the Meowmere.


No no, the next real prize is the Star Wrath, which is an upgraded version of the Starfury I got from one of those floating meat islands. Not because the Star Wrath is particularly good, you see...

But because between the Meowmere and Star Wrath, I've proved to the game that I can beat Moon Lord repeatedly.
The Terra Blade requires a whole bunch of stuff to make, which I won't go into again. You remember, right? Four pre-Wall swords, a bunch of Mech boss souls, Hallowed Bars, Chlorophyte, and a Solar Eclipse drop.
The Seedler is a prize from Plantera.
The Horseman's Blade is from the Pumpkin Moon.
The Bee Keeper is from Queen Bee.
The Influx Waver comes from Martian Madness.
The Starfury is... kind of redundant, since I already need the Star Wrath and Terra Blade, but it's here too.
The Enchanted Sword I had to fish up, since normally it appears in little shrines that Don't Dig Up worlds don't generate.
And finally, the Copper Shortsword is a meme. I guess. Apparently it's a habit among the Terraria community to respond to any claims of skill or greatness to reply "Yeah but can you do [whatever you're bragging about] with just a Copper Shortsword?" It's the game's starting equipment.

Take all eight of those blades to your anvil and forge them into one sword.


It says to the game "Yes, hello, I've done pretty much everything there is to do, there is no challenge left, you might as well give me the good stuff now."

Really the only things I can think of that are missing are rewards from, like, the Empress of Light (the Starlight isn't a part of this), anything from Duke Fishron, or the sidequests offered by the golfer or tavernkeep NPCs. Or fishing, now that I think about it, it doesn't want a Swordfish or anything.


Whatever. I have the Zenith, the best sword, the best melee-class, the best weapon in the game, hands down.


When swung, Zenith throws out its component swords in wide arcs, hitting for easily triple-digit damage.


It goes through walls. It lights up wherever it swings. It absolutely annihilates anything it hits. Zenith is awesome, and it's a fitting reward for everything you have to do to get it.


Nothing can stand in my way now.


In fact, after I complete the Stardust Armor set, I try to fully power up the Stardust Dragon and use that kit for another round of Lunatic Cultist -> Pillars -> Moon Lord. Even with me Zenith-ing alongside the dragon, it's not as good as just wearing the Solar Flare armor to boost my melee output and just Zenithing everything by itself.

[nosimpleway]

The Solar armor explodes for a counterattack when anything hits you. The Stardust Armor has, as pictured above, a passive Guardian that follows you around instead. It is totally not a Jojo stand, shut up. Yes, it flies over to enemies and ATATATATATATATAs them to death but it is not a Jojo stand shut up


I said I'd come back to Pumpkin Moon and Frost Moon later to see if I could reach level 20, and whaddyaknow, with the Zenith I totally can. The bosses -- Pumpking, Mourning Wood, Santank, Everscream, and Ice Queen -- always drop a rare drop at wave 20. I had most of them already, though.


Dick around for a day until the Cultists respawn, fight the Moon Lord, dick around, fight the Moon Lord, eventually save up enough that I've crafted the Vortex and Nebula sets of armor as well, before I remember another postgame get. So I gotta go fight the Moon Lord two or three more times for another 40 Luminite Bars. They combine with other semirare ores to make the Drill Containment Unit, which is not an outright replacement for the Picksaw on account of it being a mount to ride, not a tool to swing.


But what the Zenith does for destroying enemies, the DCU does for destroying blocks and walls. It flies like the UFO, and fires lasers that can chew through anything in the blink of an eye.

Okay, now I'm done with Moon Lord. I think. Did I get all his drops? I'm done with Luminite, at least, unless I want to build a castle out of Luminite Bricks I don't need any more to make anything else.


Just watch out where you aim, because those lasers go a long way, and can effortlessly bust the blocks out from under an Eyeballtar and spawn more evil and some outdated ore into the world.


Oh well. In for a penny, in for a pound. Let's break shit.


During a Blood Moon I remember a thing, and go get my fishing tackle.


I probably could have had my revenge earlier but forgot this enemy existed until I already had the Zenith and the Stardust Dragon. This fight did not take long. It drops a Blood Moon monolith in case I really like making everything red-tinged, and the Sanguine Staff, which from what I gather is considered on par with the Xeno Staff for "good choice for late-hardmode summon to go with you all the time".


At some point I remember to take one of those glittery balloons the Empress of Light dropped -- the ones filled with "Party Girl bathwater", remember -- and throw it into the Shimmer. That spawns the fifth pet slime to hop around in NPC's houses.

[nosimpleway]

I wasn't going to bother with the Clentaminator, given that it's not for sale in a Don't Dig Up world, so it seemed against the spirit of the intended challenge. But I've beaten Moon Lord a dozen times and have the Zenith and DCU, so the "intended challenge" has given way to me just doin' whatever. I hop into the Fishing world and buy one, along with a bunch of Green Solution for it.


Then, back in Don't Dig Up, I Shimmer that sumbitch, too. This turns it into the Terraformer, which consumes less ammo and spreads the effects further.


Observe. I stand at the edge of the Ocean, which is all Crimsand that I can't dig up without destroying the Ocean biome itself.


Pssssshhhhhht

A quick sweep of Green Solution turns all the Crimsand into regular sand, wherever the particle effects from the Terraformer go. Whatever Clentamination means, it's strong biome-control stuff.

There are Solutions of various colors, for various biomes. I wanna say Red spreads Crimson, Purple spreads Corruption, Pink spreads Hallow, Blue spreads Mushroom... there's one for Jungle but I forget what color it is. Green spreads "Purity", or the neutral dirt-and-stone forest-and-cavern biome.


After I cover the terrain in Green Solution and take away the Crimson, I can swing Zenith through the walls to check and see if I missed any spots. Those particle effects from the Terraformer don't light things up all that well, and I can't count on the light source for them to see if I've missed a block considering they'd just change the block anyway if they hit it enough to light it up.


The Zenith and Terraformer don't light solid masses of blocks up all that evenly, but I'm pretty sure Crimsand is a darker gray than half-lit regular sand. Purity achieved!

The best part is that the Solutions are "ammo", and are affected by ammo-saving effects. Between the Vortex Armor set, the Ammo Crate that gives a flat 20% chance to unspend ammo on firing, and the 33% chance from the Terraformer itself, I can cover the landscape in goopy slime all day and only like one shot out of five actually consumes any Solution.


Oh, speaking of goopy slime, here's one. Ready to do something really unintuitive?


You probably don't have a Copper Shortsword for longer than maybe half an hour at the start of the game before you upgrade it to anything else. You may have skipped Copper armor entirey, or in my case, only had Tin available. But if you throw a Copper Shortsword or Copper Helmet at a plain ol' regular slime, it will equip them and turn into the next pet slime to move into a house.

I could have done that at the very beginning if I'd realized that was a thing, but who tries to give equipment to monsters when nothing, anywhere, indicates that any of them can do anything with it?

[nosimpleway]

Going around digging up the Crimson out of the world with the DCU breaks a ton of Eyeballtars, which is a problem I'm sure I'll have to deal with later, and busts up whatever Crimson Hearts are left in the world. The Brain of Cthulhu takes its usual umbrage at this, but I've already beaten the Entirety of Cthulhu. I usually just ignore it and let the Stardust Dragon take care of things while I keep digging. It's not like the Brain can do any meaningful damage to me anymore.


Man, this takes me back. Remember when I built this thing because I was worried about fighting the Brain? Good times, good times.


This does spawn extra Meteors to hit the world but so far none of them have broken up my asphalt highway. I guess those meat clouds are in rough shape? This one fell into the ocean.


Biomes that were originally Crimson I dig up. Those were pretty big sometimes! But like, the Desert? I spray that down with goopy slime to un-Crimson it. I think I managed to keep the Jungle and Snow areas pretty clear of Crimson, and as far as I can tell Mushrooms can't be Crimsoned at all (though they do often include plain stone inside, which of course can be Crimstoned). I really didn't need to buy so much Green Solution. Oh well.


More Blood Moons, more fishing. I guess I could see if the Dreadnautilus, Hemogoblin Shark, Blood Eel or whatever that thing is, Zombie Merman, and Flying Eyefish drop banners or trophies? Eventually I fish up the next thing I'm looking for: the seventh pet slime.


who fucks off as soon as the Blood Moon is over


And then comes back the next day WOULD YOU MAKE UP YOUR MIND


"Hey", I wonder to myself, because wondering to myself and remembering things I put aside to do later is pretty much all that's left to do, "if I'm immune to lava for eight-second spreads, and eight seconds is enough time to break a couple hundred blocks with the DCU, does that mean I can basically mine out all of the Underworld? I wonder how deep the lava goes when there's no Ash or Hellstone in the way."

Turns out the answer is yes, if I felt like keeping this up I could definitely destroy every block in hell. This is about three times bigger than the little corner of the world I dug under to mine out my first batch of Hellstone, way back when. That red box, over on the far side? A Voodoo Demon got killed by my Stardust Dragon, dropped its doll into the lava, and spawned the Wall of Flesh again. It appeared at the far right side of the world and started charging. That red box is as far as it got before the Zenith and Stardust Dragon killed it.

I dug out all the Crimson in the world that's not along the two sides of the map, and made Hell a nominally better place, maybe, I guess? Today is the day after the 2022 midterms so I guess I just wanted to play in a world that could actually be improved with attention and effort.

This still isn't the end of the LP, though.

[nosimpleway]

If there's no surface Jungle biome to work with, since yours was all Crimsoned at worldgen and then you dug it all up, storebought is fine. Wait for the game to generate some critters in it, and there's the usual single-digit chance of a rare event happening. When you see a Mystic Frog, you might be tempted to catch it with a bug net! But no


Sprinkle it with Purification Powder, as you would have had to do in a vanilla world to recruit the Tax Collector, and it turns into the next recruitable slime pet.


Flesh Blocks, like those that make up the meat clouds, count as Crimson. But they can't be Clentaminated into anything else. What to do, what to do...


Oh yeah, I can just pull up all the Flesh Blocks and Flesh Walls, that way they don't count.


To my knowledge there's no "don't Meteor this kind of block" in the game, but paving the entire world in Asphalt Blocks has made is surprisingly meteorite-proof. This island took two meteorites at some point, and that seems really unlikely to happen by chance.


Next project: dig straight vertical shafts that are about as far apart as twice the Terraformer's range through the Crimson and Hallow spots on the sides of the map. Glide gently down each one, spraying Green Solution to each side.




The Terraformer shoots further than I can see things onscreen, so there are some dark spots between gaps that I haven't explored but have purified. And yeah, that Hallow Pylon doesn't work anymore on account of how it's not in the Hallow.


There's an achievement for wiping out all the Evil and Hallow in a world. Lucky me the Eyeballtars I've broken haven't spawned in a block somewhere I couldn't find.

[nosimpleway]

Whoops, careful where you aim that Terraformer. Mushroom biomes Clentaminate into Jungle when sprayed with Green Solution, and while you can get the mushrooms back with a squirt of Blue Solution, the Chlorophyte will remain as a monument to your carelessness.


The quad copter you can buy from the Cyborg handles like the ship in Asteroids -- thruster straight "up", directional controls to rotate, no brakes. Which is probably how an actual quad copter handles, I've never tried to fly one. This would be useful to scout around open spaces and find, say, floating islands, except before the Cyborg ever shows up you have better options.

Anyway, fly the copter off the top of the screen into outer space for the "To Infinity and Beyond!" achievement.


Next on the list: take off the Celestial Shell so I can't breathe underwater. Go underwater. Wait for breath to run out and for HP to start draining. Drink a bottle of water for a small HP restore to stave off drowning.

What's funny is that I did this exact thing in Fallout 3 at one point.


"Unicorns and Rainbows": Fire the Rainbow Gun while riding a Unicorn.


"Midas's Feast": I've caught a couple of Golden critters before, but tended to sell them off to fund my Reforge addiction. I snag one and instead cook it in a pot to make a Golden Delight, which seems like the best food item in the game.


"Get Pasted By a Falling Star" is not an achievement but it is still a thing that can happen if the game spontaneously decides "Hey! Fuck you."

[nosimpleway]

There are two times you can take on the Tavernkeep's cross-game promotion with Dungeon Defenders 2. I've never played it! All the references are lost on me!

Anyway, two times you can do this. 1) when you're "supposed" to, in which case it is hard as balls and 2) now

The event gets bigger as you finish off main-questline bosses, culminating in Golem. Obviously, each time you're best off waiting until juuuust before you finish off the next boss that would advance the quest to grind up rewards that are available before unlocking the next tier. Or say "to hell with that" and just do it with postgame equipment.


DD2 is a tower-defense game. So to play the event you buy a stand for a fragile crystal, set it up in a nice flat arena so enemies can march toward it, and fight off all the monsters you can that are trying to break your crystal.

To this end, you can buy Turrets, which are sentry-type summons. I assume they're all DD2 references, and they're bought from the Tavernkeep with the currency you get from playing this event. He spots you 10 medals to buy the first pair, the rest you have to fight and earn yourself.

To the left of this screen is the basic, level 1 lightning bolt-thrower, set up to defend the crystal. Above is the Rainbow Crystal sentry from the Moon Lord, neatly obsoleting every event-exclusive sentry I could buy. Did I mention the Stardust Armor allows the summoning of a second sentry as a passive? I've got a Rainbow Crystal on each side. Below me, of course, is my fully-powered Stardust Dragon, and behind me is my Stand.


Eventually I work out that I'm so overpowered that I can just stand in the center until the seventh and final wave brings in the third boss. If an Ogre or something manages to get about halfway through the field of fire from the Rainbow Crystal, the Stardust Dragon takes care of it.


The boss is Betsy. Monsters still come out of the portals for tower defense, while Betsy tests your multitasking by attacking the player character directly. Stardust Dragon, Zenith, and ATATATATATATATA make her a speedbump at worst.

I'm glossing over a ton of details because I just don't care all that much. Rewards include summoner-themed armor and accessory sets based on DD2 classes... which might explain why it's so badly-served by the usual main-game equipment progression, with only Tiki, Spooky, and Stardust boosting it in Hardmode and approximately fuckall before the Wall of Flesh. You can keep the sentry turrets you buy and use them like usual. And of course, the three event bosses have a bunch of alternating drops, so you can play through a dozen times to farm for those.

(You can then sell one of them without realizing it like some sort of moron, and have to do it all again for a Besty drop later on. I don't recommend it, but you can...)


I can't say it's worse than fishing, but it ain't better. Postgame it's dull as hell to wait for the event to finish itself, and that's better than the alternative of doing each quest on time.

[nosimpleway]

In a small mercy, the in-game bestiary automatically moves all blank entries to the end so you can figure out what you're missing. Of course, there's no in-game hints as to what each number is, so it's another "look it up on the wiki" sort of thing. Go figure.


#503: The Torch God. I can't find anything in the game that points you to this until after you've already done it. Put down over 100 torches in a small enough area and the Torch God gets annoyed enough at you to put you through a trial where each torch spits a fireball at you. Since this is something you can do at the very beginning of the game, as soon as you have 101 torches, the fireballs aren't exactly threatening. I could have facetanked all 101 of them.

The reward is the bestiary entry for the Torch God and the "Torch God's Blessing", allowing me to put any kind of torch down and it automatically transforms into the biome-specific torch for the biome I'm in. Having the right torch around gives a luck bonus, but... eh, it's done. Whatever.


#34, #36, #37 are the tamed slimes I found. You gotta find where they're living amongst your NPCs and talk to them to get their bestiary entries.


#27, #28, and #29 are the pet dog, cat, and bunny you can buy licenses to keep from the Zoologist, and fill the bestiary entries the same way.


#167, the Blood Squid. It's a summoned minion that the Dreadnautilus throws out once in a while. I had to turn off my passive summons to get this one, since the Stardust Dragon could kill the Dreadnautilus before it had a chance to summon anything.


#177, Maggot Zombie, only spawns in graveyards. Stardust Dragon killed the one that eventually showed up before it was even onscreen, but it at least did the job of dropping a couple of #92, Maggot. That's just mediocre fishing bait.


#507, the Eater of Worlds. I killed this thing a half-dozen times off in some other map, but to fill the Bestiary in this world I've got to kill it here. So I went and got some Purple Solution, made a bit of Corruption, killed stuff until it dropped some Rotten Chunks, used the Chunks to make some Worm Food, and summoned and killed what's-his-name here.

Building the proper environment to summon Eater of Worlds also nets me #327, the Eater of Souls (which despite the intimidating name is a common Corruption mook) and #334, the Corrupt Mimic.


Building environments to spawn other monsters I mess around with Illuminant Paint, purchasable from the Painter when he's in a Graveyard biome. Illuminant Paint makes the block or background wall fully lit, all the time, without any other light source. But the painted block doesn't shed light onto its surroundings, giving the odd visual effect of fighting enemies in silhouette around lighted walls and blocks.


#158, Corrupt Bunny; #159, Corrupt Penguin; #161, Vicious Penguin; #169, Corrupt Goldfish. While I'm at it, #335, Corrupt Pigron, #365, Ice Pigron. Remember how it's possible to activate a statue of a monster, and it creates a living version of the creature that the statue represents? Instead of going out to look for goldfish, bunnies, or penguins I can make my own, hit them with Corrupting or Crimsoning powder, and fill the bestiary entries that way. Pigron statues summon a random variation of the Pigron when it's activated, so that's done too.


Some critters you make yourself. In this case, #44, the Explosive Bunny, is made by strapping dynamite to a captured bunny.

Yeah.


Just, when you put them down to interact with them and get the bestiary entry? Make sure you don't have, say, a summon monster following you, running into all of the bunnies you've put on the ground and detonating them all at your feet.

[nosimpleway]

That's most of 'em... as it turns out, all the variation deserts I've been building can't spawn the monsters I'm looking for. Deserts spawn Ghouls, and there are variations for Crimson, Corrupt, and Hallow. But they won't spawn in environs that the player built, you have to find a natural desert with the right variation. Which makes getting the spawns for them a giant pain in the ass, particularly in a world where you're not supposed to have the Terraformer. Nothing like spending a ton of time building the right space for a monster to spawn only to find that the monster won't spawn no matter what you built!

There are also variations on Sand Sharks that show up for Crimson, Corruption, and Hallow, when you're in those kinds of deserts during a sandstorm. I manage to land most of the Ghoul variations and most of the Sand Shark variations during the same sandstorm, by corrupting and purifying and hallowing and purifying in turn before the weather calms. Then I realized I'd missed the Crimson shark and had to wait for another sandstorm, which seemed like it took forever. Talk about an impolite and discourteous weather pattern. You might say it's... da rude sandstorm.


The last few things to get are critters, rather than monsters. I just make a new world, because after the ghouls thing I'm not about to try and figure out how exactly to get the "spawns in the water, in a desert, on the surface, near a town" works in a DDU map. This is what an oasis looks like in worlds where the entire surface isn't Crimsoned.






This world had a Pyramid, which... isn't even remotely pyramid-shaped... under a part of the desert. This is where Sandstorms in Bottles are found in the wild, without making them out of Forbidden Fragments.


#113, the Grebe. I catch it in a net, haul it back to DDU, and let it go to interact with it for the bestiary entry.


#99, Amber Squirrel. Gem variants of critters show up semirandomly, and the only one that hasn't shown up so far is the Amber-variant squirrel. I have no idea how to get it to spawn, but just in case, I plant a little grove of Amber Trees. It makes sense, dammit.

The Amber Squirrel that eventually showed up was still pretty far away from where I put these trees so I don't think it made any difference.




For DDU, the Empress of Light doesn't enrage in the daytime. She enrages when summoned on the surface. I have a Hallow environment on the surface from trying to get the Hallow Ghoul to show up, so I pop out one of my captured Lacewings and see if I can manage.


Yeah. Zenith can handle just about anything. I can damage-race the Empress down without having to worry about too many incoming attacks, simply because it doesn't take very long.

Man. You ever been so bored grinding out rare spawns that you just took on an optional superboss for no real reason? This last critter is the worst, I just can't it to show up no matter what map I create, where I put a settlement, however much water I p--


*Exdeath in Dissidia voice* TURTLE!


The reward for completing the entire bestiary is that the Universal Pylon becomes available for sale. I don't really need to go much of anywhere anymore, and barely use the pylons I've got at this point, but it's a sign that I'm done with one of the last tasks I want to complete.